Missing Pieces of You
by Mia-Zeklos
Summary: During the year when the Master ruled the Earth, two rather bright examples of the resistance of his reign happen to meet halfway and, as it turns out, not even the reversing of time can stop them from meeting again.


**Author's Notes: This is officially the longest one shot I have ever written and some parts of it were really emotionally exhausting. It took forty pages on my notebook so it took a while to transfer it to the computer, but here it is now so I really hope it was worth it. I wasn't sure what characters to give it, too, let alone pairings, so I just put everyone in.**

**References: The song used both times is Oceans by Evanescence and there is a blink-or-you'll-miss-it reference to another story of mine, **_**Dreaming Wide Awake**_**. Actually, you'll probably miss it even if you don't blink, but it felt right to mention it. Also, it's a prequel to _Falling Slowly_ and you'll probably find some references for it here so if you're curious about the outcome of it all, then the fics are in my profile (in the order _Falling Slowly_, _Eyes as Old as Time_ and _Dreaming Wide Awake_ if you want it to make sense). This can be read completely by itself, of course.**

**Important note: all the information about the year that never was is taken from the book **_**The Story of Martha**_** – it's about, well, the story of Martha during said year and things that were especially mentioned were the riots in my region of Europe (Bulgaria and Turkey specifically), the Drast and Japan, and even the message that Ianto hears from the Shadow Proclamation. Everything else is spawned from my ridiculous headcanons, so I really hope you like it and I'd love to know what you think.**

_Can't find the road to lead us out of this_

_A million miles from where we burned the bridge_

_Can't keep pretending everything's going to be alright_

_With the whole world falling down on me_

_Cross the oceans in my mind_

For once, 'Take me to your leader' seemed to have worked in her advantage. Whenever asked who was in charge here, every one of the refugees this side of the Himalayas sent her to go looking for Ianto Jones. If she didn't know for a fact that the man was real, Martha would have thought that he was a local deity or something like that.

And here she was now, in the medium-sized wooden cabin that currently housed about fifty people, waiting for him to finish his shower. It seemed so mundane after four months of travelling all around the world, but she had a feeling that he would be able to help her.

The door of the small bathroom creaked open and Martha raised her head. She didn't know what she had been expecting; someone local, despite the name, maybe. Someone older, definitely.

The man was in his early twenties, with black hair and strikingly bright blue eyes. He was tall and his skin was almost unnaturally pale – and she could see more of it than it would have been strictly appropriate, because his only clothing was the towel wrapped around his narrow hips.

"I didn't realise we were having visitors," he said and blinked several times, as if he was waking up after sleeping for a long, long time. His voice was gentle and softened the Welsh accent that laced his words. "Ianto Jones."

"I figured out that much," Martha smiled as she shook the hand he offered her. "Martha Jones."

His eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline. "Okay, I didn't realise we were having _famous_ visitors." The smile on his lips seemed genuine if slightly hard won. He looked like he hadn't smiled in a long time. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Likewise. You've helped everyone you met on your way. People talk."

He shrugged modestly – which didn't go well with the pleased smirk that curled his lips – and the gesture attracted Martha's attention back to his body. She couldn't help it when the doctor inside her raised her head. "When's the last time you've eaten?"

Ianto shrugged again. "Last night. I think. I sort of forget to do it. Don't really get hungry. And plus, there are lots of people to take care of here. I'm busy."

"I was wondering about that, actually," Martha started as she was reminded of something she'd noticed when entering the building for the first time. "How do you keep this place so warm?"

"Alien tech," he answered without too much prompting. "I'm not sure how exactly it works, but it's enough to keep everyone hot. I took everything that could be useful when we took off to the Himalayas."

"'We'?"

Ianto laughed humourlessly. "Torchwood. That's what I am. Well– what's left of it, anyway."

Martha had never associated Torchwood with anything good; not at all. Her cousin had died there, in the fires of Canary Wharf, and the Doctor apparently stood against them. When Adeola had spoken of them, it had sounded to Martha like a vast, legal cult and she said so to Ianto, who sighed heavily with some emotion between dark amusement and downright bitterness.

"I knew her," he said. "Your cousin; I thought of her the moment I saw you. She was directly linked to the Ghost Shifts and she was against it at first; said that it wasn't our job to mess with life and death and that we were supposed to keep the aliens in instead of letting them out because we wanted to see what would happen."

"So after the battle of Canary Wharf you moved to Cardiff?" Martha asked softly, trying to delicately learn something more about him, because she didn't have much time to spare and, especially here in the mountains, she needed someone to help her.

Ianto nodded. "Yes. About ten months ago. Four months ago the Captain went missing and we were sent on a mission over here."

"You mean Captain Jack?" Martha asked. "He's on the Valiant."

"I know," Ianto's voice was quiet. "And I can't free him. I'm only going to get myself killed, and I really don't give a damn about that, but those people need me."

"That's exactly why I'm here, actually." Martha was by now pretty sure that he was just what she would need. "I could really use someone like you."

Ianto just nodded. "Right. What's the plan?"

"You're being surprisingly... open about this," Martha said carefully. "You know, alien tech and the Valiant and Torchwood and–"

"You've been travelling with the Doctor. I just didn't think there'd be any secrets for you. I ran a background check – the UNIT kind – when you started gaining popularity," he added quickly at her questioning look. "I tried contacting the Shadow Proclamation, hoping that they'd help, but they wouldn't answer. _This_ is the only thing I get." He fiddle briefly with something that looked like a futuristic radio device and, after a crackling sound, a voice could be heard.

_Space Lane Traffic is advised to stay away from Sol: 3, also known as Earth. Pilots are warned Sol: 3 is now entering Terminal Extinction. Planet Earth is closed. Planet Earth is closed. Planet Earth is closed..._

"They've written us off," Ianto said, turning it off with a little more power than necessary. "Nobody's inclined to help us, which means we're on our own. So what's the plan?"

"Most people I've met think that I'm looking for a weapon, but as far as I know, there isn't one. What I'm actually going to do is use the Archangel net. If everyone on Earth thinks the same thing in one exact moment, it'll override the Master's signal. The Archangel Network is the only weapon that could control the whole world."

"Makes sense." Ianto nodded, all business now. "You're telling stories, right? About the Doctor."

"You've heard of him?"

"I've met him. Twice – once in Canary Wharf, and I'm not sure if that counts, and one time before that, just before I started working for Torchwood at all. Looked different, though."

"What was he like?" Martha couldn't help but ask. She knew that her Doctor had been the one in Torchwood London, but she couldn't know if the one Ianto had met was a future or a past regeneration. That was time travel for you.

"About my age. Tall. Brown-haired. Strangely obsessed with bowties." Ianto's voice was neutral, but she could tell that he'd liked that version of the Doctor better than the current one.

"He must have been a future one," Martha said, remembering the archives with all the Time Lord's recorded appearances she'd seen in Turkey's branch of UNIT.

"I suppose. He acted as if he knew me, so I guess I'm going to meet him again. He didn't want to say anything, but he accidentally let it slip that the last time he'd met me was in 4495, which is mildly intriguing."

"You've got stories of your own, then!" Martha could see this working. She could see this working very well indeed. "You could help. I can't stay here for too long."

"Neither can I." Suddenly, Ianto leaned in; as if he was afraid they were being monitored. "The Master thinks we're all dead, and I'm not exactly staying under the radar. I have to bring this people food and clothes and weapons, so it's actually–"

"Weapons?" Martha cut him off. "You're preparing these people to _fight_?"

"They can do it, with the right training." Ianto said calmly. "And I'll do anything I can to get them ready.

**o.O.o**

Ianto woke up suddenly, with a startled gasp as his mind tried to make the difference between sleep and awake. He tried to sit up – mostly by removing as much of Jack's body on top of his as he could – and stared at the clock on the nightstand. Four in the morning. There was no reason for him to be awake, except one.

He'd dreamt of her again.

"Ianto?" Jack's voice was a bit slurred. He was usually a heavy sleeper, but after he had came back to Torchwood, nightmares seemed to haunt him all the time and Ianto's sudden movement had probably startled him. "Something wrong?"

"No, I just... I..." The younger man tried to relax as he lied back down. "Never mind."

With a sigh, Jack shifted about a bit until he could face Ianto. "Whatever it was, it's all right now, yeah?" His lover just nodded and Jack leant in to kiss him.

"It was her again," Ianto managed at last. Maybe it would stop bothering him so much if he said it out loud.

Jack froze in his arms. "I'm not going through this again." His voice was suddenly cold and Ianto sighed.

He'd had these dreams for quite a long time now and every time he'd told Jack about them, the man had brushed it off as something unimportant or teased him about having a crush on whoever the girl he dreamed of was. The more Ianto insisted that it was important, the more irritated Jack got and, after a few times, he absolutely refused to talk about it.

"Jack, she must be important. This has been happening for _weeks_."

"She could be anyone!" Jack didn't have much room for big dramatic gestures in the small bed he had down here, but he still managed to throw his arms up. "I know you can't make someone up in your dreams, but she could be anyone. She could be the girl down the coffee shop!"

"When have you seen me in a coffee shop, Jack?"

"I think I got my point across."

"I don't know why it bothers you so much," Ianto said quietly after a long, heavy minute of silence in which both of them just glared at the ceiling. "You have to admit that it's sort of weird." There was an almost pleading edge to Ianto's voice and since he looked so lost and afraid with his bright innocent eyes, which seemed very blue and very wide every time he wanted something, the Captain found himself unable to say 'no' to him. He'd fallen in this trap before and knew it, which made the whole thing even more frustrating.

"Sort of," he agreed half-heartedly. "But God knows what it is. Just leave it, eh?" And with that, he initiated another kiss, burying his hands in Ianto's hair and nipping gently on his lower lip.

Ianto could feel the dream slipping away from him, just like it always did. It was as if the moment he woke up, there was a barrier being pulled over his mind and he could no longer dwell on the details.

And yet here it was; fragments of it coming back to him as he rolled them over so he could end up on top of Jack. It was like a mirror of one of his dreams. Not the one he'd had tonight, not exactly, but a similar one. He couldn't remember the mysterious girl's face – it disappeared from him every time he woke up – but he could remember how broken he'd felt at the thought of letting her go just as clearly as he could recall the salt of her tears on his lips; tears provoked by the feelings that fuelled their kiss.

Jack pulled away from him, his eyes glistening with barely contained annoyance. "You do realise that this is highly unflattering, right?" Ianto just blinked owlishly at him. "Could you focus on the person at hand, please?" Jack continued, propping himself up on his elbows. "I don't know who that girl is, but I can tell which one of us you're kissing."

"I'm sorry." Ianto could feel his cheeks heating. "I didn't mean– it's just so real. It doesn't feel like a dream. It feels like a memory."

"Okay." With a deep sigh of resignation, Jack gave up. "Okay. Tell me about her."

"That's just the thing," Ianto started, enthusiastic now that they'd got to the topic he'd wanted to discuss. "She seems so real, and when I wake up, I hardly remember anything. But... she's beautiful. Really beautiful. Smart and brave. She wanted me to–" He closed his eyes and stumbled over his own words as he tried to dig deeper into the vision that was fading away so quickly. "She wanted me to help her with something. We were in a mountain cabin, somewhere far away from here."

"Who else was there?" jack's voice was low and gentle, guiding, as Ianto made his way through the foggy surface of his dream.

"No one. Just us."

"Ah. I have a feeling about where this is going." There was the sound of the sheets shuffling and the bed dipped lower as Jack placed himself closer to his lover. "Do go on."

"Jack!" Ianto's eyes snapped open and he stared at the Captain, irritated. "If you're not going to take this seriously–"

"Hey, you can't deny that I've got a point," Jack retorted, indignant, as he apparently tried to fight the leer from crawling on his face. "A mountain cabin and only the two of you–"

"Shut it," Ianto commanded firmly as he tried to relax once again. "Anyway, I was alone when she found me. She introduced herself and–" His voice died. "Her name..."

"Yes, Ianto?" Jack's voice was back to that hypnotising murmur and Ianto briefly wondered if he'd been trained to take someone through this kind of thing.

"Martha Jones!" Ianto exclaimed, relieved to finally have a name. "That's it. Martha Jones." The second time he said it, it was just to savour it no his tongue, amazed by the warmth that he felt spreading through him.

He chanced a questioning look in Jack's direction, surprised by the lack of reaction, only to see that the Captain's eyes had gone wide and distant, as if he had suddenly found himself somewhere far, far away.

"Jack?" Ianto asked tentatively, touching his lover's hand gently. "Do you know her? Did I say something wrong?"

Jack seemingly shook it off in an instant. "No, it's fine. And yes, I know her. But – I really don't think you should be remembering this, Ianto. This isn't Retcon; you can't trigger it. It literally never happened."

"It was during the year you told me about, wasn't it?" Ianto asked quietly. "The year that got reversed. I sensed it when it happened; the temporal disturbance was too high not to notice." Ianto smiled at Jack's bewildered look. "I'm very sensitive when it comes to time. That was what intrigued Torchwood in the first place. Yvonne brought me at her office to talk to me about it and she said that someone's been messing with my timelines – or maybe would in the future – and that my– ability was a side effect."

Jack didn't seem in any way calmer about it, even after this titbit of information.

"Ianto, nothing of this year should be remembered. I have no idea what might happen if someone who wasn't on the Valiant has got memories from it."

"I don't. Well, for the most part. It's just her." Ianto wondered why exactly he was trying to justify something he had no control over. "I'll try to– I don't know. Block it somehow. That enough?"

"I think so," Jack said as he reached for Ianto again. It was too late to go back to sleep and too early to get up and he had a feeling that Ianto would need to be distracted from what he was experiencing. "C'mere. And try not to dwell on it. She's fine now. You don't need to worry."

And this time, when he pressed his lips against Ianto's, Jack made sure that the man knew exactly who he was kissing.

**o.O.o**

Martha was cleaning his wound and, despite the fact that she wasn't saying a thing, Ianto could feel the cold fury coming from her.

"This one will leave a scar," she said at last, not as apologetic as she had been aiming for. Ianto had a feeling that she thought he deserved it. Maybe she was right. "There's nothing I can do."

"'s okay." Ianto managed, his voice muffled as he tried not to move his mouth too much. A deep, bloody wound went through his left cheek, diagonally reaching from his jaw to just below his eyes. "All ladies love a bit of scarring anyway."

"Do they now," Martha muttered darkly as she poured some more antiseptic on the piece of cotton in her hand. Ianto could tell that she would have preferred much better conditions for her patients – and there were lots of them here – but there wasn't much they could do about it.

"Sure they do," he kept going, trying to distract her. "You've got to admit it."

"There's nothing as irresistible as your caveman tendencies to bring me prey, yes." She glared at him over her own hands that were still working on the wound. "What happened?"

It had been quite some time since she'd first arrived here and she had been coming and going a few times, too. Now was the only moment they had to exchange information.

"I was out to bring something for dinner – we've got fifty people here, and most of them can't do it with the Toclafane out there – when I ran into a small squad from the Containment Forces. They couldn't see me," at that, he tried (not completely successfully) to nod at the key pendant Martha gave him when he went out, "but I attacked anyway. I recognised one of them – it was the man who killed Tosh. He tried fighting me with a knife, hence the wound." There was the same grim determination in his eyes that Martha feared would kill him one day. "The fewer of them, the better, anyway."

"How many of them did you fight?" She asked softly. He shrugged and then hissed as pain from another wound – a somewhat old one – shot through him.

"All of them. Five men and a woman. Like I said, it was a small squad."

"And what happened to them?"

"I'm afraid they suffered the fate of the aforementioned dinner." Ianto gestured at the goat on the table nearby.

"_You killed them with an axe?"_

He didn't seem too troubled by that. "They deserved it. If they're working for him, they deserve it. Did you know that I've managed to wipe out their entire network in the mountain? These were the last ones. I've got people everywhere; I'm not on my own," he added at her surprised expression. Ianto smiled – which was a really rare occurrence – and brought her closer to himself. "Nobody notices it because we're in the middle of nowhere, but we've taken over the Himalayas almost entirely. Give me just a few more weeks and the ones I've picked will be ready. I'm not saying it'll be fast or easy, but if we have enough time, we can turn every single country on this planet into an army."

And this, this right here was precisely why they couldn't spend too much time together, Martha thought. They both wanted to turn humanity into a weapon. Her ways just weren't as bloody as his.

"I need to keep going," she said at last. "There's still a lot I need to do. But I'll have to keep in touch somehow."

"I've got communicating devices that can override the Archangel Network," Ianto murmured, pressing his lips into her hair. "And I just bet we'll see each other again anyway."

Martha smiled sadly. "I know we will."

**o.O.o**

It felt almost like a replay of another night as Ianto woke up with a start again and, after a seemingly endless moment of disorientation, tried to calm himself down.

He was in his own bedroom, for God's sake. Next to him, Jack just stared at him, confused and suspicious.

"It's nothing," Ianto mumbled, resisting the urge to cower away from the Captain's intense gaze. "I'm fine."

Jack sighed. "Ianto, she's coming to Torchwood next week." His voice was soft, as if he was trying to apologise for what he was saying. "If you meet her, face to face, all your memories might come back and I don't know what would happen then. It would create a paradox – you remembering something that never happened – and a paradox was exactly what caused this whole thing."

"You're not retconning me, Jack," Ianto said firmly. "I don't care what we're going to do, but you are _not _retconning me. It's not like it's going to hold, anyway."

"You're right." Jack seemed inclined to agree, as soon as Ianto was willing to do something. Not that he had much of a choice. In One, they had taught and trained them with Retcon for long enough so they could develop resistance to it. Ianto sometimes thought that those might have been Yvonne's anti-Jack precautions, and whenever the thought crossed his mind, he tried to chase it away before it had the chance to freak him out. "I could put a mind block on you. You've been in One's experimental program, right?" Ianto nodded. "And you're sort of psychic anyway. I've tried connecting with you before and it didn't work, so you'll have to tone down the defences a bit."

Another nod from Ianto. He was well aware of all kinds of mental shields and his time in Torchwood One had only enhanced that.

"Close your eyes," Jack instructed. "Now, I need to block these particular memories from your mind, so you'll have to put them forward and let me in." Ianto dutifully closed his eyes and imagined what he always did – two large wooden doors that slowly slung open. "That's it," Jack encouraged. "Take your time."

"It's done," Ianto murmured, still focused on what he was doing. "Shields down."

"No, they aren't," Jack objected with increasing worry as he pushed gently against Ianto's mental walls again. "They aren't even halfway down. They haven't even _moved_."

"That's all I can do, Jack," Ianto insisted. "I can hear you already. The connection's open."

"Well, it's a one-way connection, then. I can barely get a glimpse of you." Jack felt as if he was making his way through a forest on a moonless night. He could sense a hint of Ianto's thoughts, the ones on the very surface, but as he tried to go any further, he faced the strongest mind block he'd ever seen, just like any other time he'd tried this with Ianto.

Jack had tried looking him up on Mainframe's systems once, when he'd realised that he knew next to nothing about the young man. What he had found had intrigued him greatly – very, very vague and obviously fake records of his life, and one classified file that had been detected only when Jack had set the range of the search to intergalactic. Ever since then, he'd been fairly sure that he didn't actually have the faintest idea who – or what – Ianto was, and also that he was surprisingly fine with that. Ianto seemed to know and possess things that no one was supposed to at this day and age. Sometimes he shared with jack memories that would have been ordinary if it weren't for some little detail that was out of its time – being on the Thames frost fairs, going on the première of a movie that wouldn't be created for another twenty years, three galaxies away from here. He said it without an ounce of wonder about it, which made Jack suspect that whoever had blocked Ianto's memories had made Ianto genuinely believe that he was who he was meant to be.

"Jack?" Ianto's strained voice threw the Captain's train of thought off its tracks. "If you're gonna do something, do it now. I can't keep this up for much longer."

"Sorry," Jack said hurriedly. "I'll just have to work with what I've got. I'm sorry," he repeated and they both knew that it had nothing to do with making him wait.

_Fallen so far from where we were before_

_You'll never find what you've been searching for_

_Something to fill the void and make up for all of those missing pieces of you_

_Like I could only dream to do_

When Martha came back to the Himalayas, months later and just before she had to get back to Britain, she was so afraid that she wouldn't find Ianto still alive that at first, she couldn't believe it when she saw him.

She could hardly tell it was him as he walked up the hill with a large – and undoubtedly alien – gun thrown over his shoulder. There were countless little scars all over his face and hands and he seemed somehow even taller than before. There was a quickly spreading bloodstain on his trousers, just above his left knee, but he wasn't paying any attention to it.

Martha saw the precise moment when he noticed her. He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening and the hand that held the gun fell by his side.

The second he recovered from the shock, she found herself in his embrace and he was covering her face with butterfly kisses as he frantically mumbled, "You're alive, you're okay", in her ear. Martha closed her eyes and gave in to the familiar feeling of his big hands on her shoulders, his tender, gentle attention and quiet, softly accented voice.

She had missed this, she realised. She's stayed here for three weeks and yet, he had given her hope. So much hope, and at that point, it had been exactly what she had needed.

"You're even more beautiful than I remember," he murmured as his long fingers caressed her face.

"Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you."

It was true. Martha didn't know who he'd been before all of this had started, but the man she knew was a warrior, one of the fiercest she'd ever met. He had been able to turn ordinary people into an army, just like he'd promised.

"I used the technology left by the Drast," he said to her several hours later as they sat in his small room. "I managed to get some things out while Japan was burning. The power had gone out – was that you, by the way?"

Martha nodded and winced. Japan was still a fresh memory and she really didn't want it to be so. The Drast had been aliens that had been slowly trying to invade long before the Master's appearance, and they had used some sort of technology to keep it off the radar.

"Now there isn't a single Toclafane here," Ianto continued. "I've sent people everywhere and we've gained control over the whole continent, save for Russia – that's Shipyard One, and they'd notice – and nobody even knows it."

Martha sat up quickly. "The whole continent? Why didn't I know about this?"

"That was the point. We don't attract any attention to ourselves even from potential friends. The Master is busy with other things – there are riots in Eastern Europe, people in Australia are raising their heads... to him, the mountains are a bit of a dead zone; that's why he sent us here. I'm used to staying out of people's attention. Working for a top secret organisation all through your adult life kind of gives you the right training for it." There was that small, smug smile playing on his lips that appeared whenever he knew he was being particularly clever.

"And you're still here? In that cabin, while you're in charge of so many things?"

Ianto shrugged. "Think of it as a headquarters. I have my eyes and ears everywhere and most of the time, I travel all over the place, trying to make a difference and help where I can. I keep telling your stories and occasionally mine as well. It seems to have the desired effect."

"And the Master has no idea who's behind it?" Martha could see the advantages of manpower, even though she rather hoped they would succeed using her plan – the lesser the death toll the better. "How many people have you got?"

"Thousands. Millions, probably. He knows who I am and he's been looking for me for months, but I'm quite capable of leaving false trails everywhere. He thinks I'm somewhere in Utah right now, and I'd like to keep it that way." Ianto gave a short, dark chuckle. "It drives him crazy. But never mind me. Tell me about yourself. How's your mission going?" He asked softly and that was when Martha knew she'd have to break his heart.

**o.O.o**

"I'm coming with you," Ianto stated in the moment Martha had finished talking. There was no way he was leaving her alone in this. No way in hell. He'd fought for nearly a year here and he had no intention of leaving Martha alone in her final battle for this world.

She just shook her head – not discouraging, but still something he'd expected. "You can't. He'll kill you the moment he sees you."

"But he won't kill _you_?"

"Not straight away." There was a strangely cynic glint in her warm, dark eyes and Ianto wished he had known her before all of this; had known who she was and what a person she would be without the mental scars of the hiding and the never ending battle. "I've seen him up close. He likes to play with his dinner before he eats it; I've seen it happen with other people he's been chasing. I've got out of his grasp so many times and once he's got me, he'll rub it in just long enough for me to do what I have to.

"But you," Martha kept talking when she realised that he would try to object. "You're important to me, and he would already have noticed that by now. He sent people to kill everyone from Torchwood months ago, so he knows that you're a part of jack's team. He'll shoot on sight."

"Time is going to reverse itself anyway." Ianto knew that it was a weak argument, but he couldn't help it. If there was one thing about that year he didn't want to forget (because he would if this worked like it was supposed to), it was Martha. She had kept him going for so long and he couldn't bear the thought of ever letting that go.

She felt so small, so tiny in his arms. So fragile. He took her in with his eyes; her hair – longer than it had been the last time he'd seen her – was like a shining black veil over her shoulders, the graceful arch of her back where he could put his hands and bring her closer. Her eyes, though; her eyes had been the first thing he'd notice about her. That quiet, steady flame that clashed with the blinding fire that set his soul ablaze. That was why they always had arguments about the right way to lead them to success – Martha was a leader that could reign over the world peacefully and be loved by everyone, and he was a warrior that would risk his life without a second thought just for the thrill of it; just for a small moment of victory.

"If you die on the Valiant, you'll stay dead, Ianto."

"I've been running for so many years. Maybe it's time to stop." He wasn't sure why he'd said it or why he felt so _tired_ all of a sudden, but he realised that he didn't particularly care whether he would live to see the world reverse itself.

"I think you'll only stop when you find what you're looking for." Martha looked up at him and there it was again – that absolute faith in his abilities. Faith which he didn't have most of the time.

"I wish I could never forget you," he managed at last.

"You'll still remember me. Deep down. I'll be there, you just wouldn't know it."

"I suppose these are the perils of loving someone who keeps insisting on saving the world," Ianto's voice was bitter as he thought of every single person he'd ever been ready to die for as much as he was for her. Each one of them had been like that.

"I suppose you're right," Martha said. He saw himself in her eyes and it was in a whole new light; in a way no one had ever seen him before and he saw her thought mirroring his for the first and last time ever.

**o.O.o**

The instant she opened the door of the Tourist Office, Martha recognised him. Sitting in his chair with a small smile playing on his lips, and reading something he was completely engrossed in. In some ways, he was the same man she remembered – the long lean body, the pale skin, the eyes with a rarely bright shade of blue and the dark short hair.

But his face – while having the same sharp features – wasn't scarred and he was dressed in a smart suit instead of the rough clothes he'd had to use in the mountains. There was the same looming fire in his eyes and he looked like he was constantly struggling to keep it there instead of letting it show – he was still the man who could kill in cold blood because he thought it was the right thing to do.

_The perils of loving someone who keeps insisting on saving the world_. And he'd been right, so right, because that was what he had done as well – saving the world whatever it took, and she had loved him for it.

Ianto looked up to greet her. For a moment, there was a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

Then there was nothing.

**o.O.o**

"Are you all right?" Jack asked quietly from behind her. Martha glanced at him for a moment. "I'm fine." He'd already asked that question and, by the time she had answered, it had been the truth.

"You know what I mean." His voice was gentle as he followed her gaze to the workstations downstairs. "Do you miss him?"

He was one of the most exceptional people I have ever met." There was a brief pause. "Of course I miss him."

"He thought the same of you. He probably still does, but I've put a mind block on the topic. It had to be done," he continued when she shot him a look. "He's very sensitive to anything that's messing up with time, and God knows I sometimes fear he'll be the death of us all."

"I just can't believe it," she managed at last. "I've seen him. He can be brilliant He_ is_ brilliant. And you're keeping him here to make you lot coffee. It's ridiculous."

"I know," Jack agreed, his voice barely audible. "I know. But– things tend to happen when he's on the loose. You don't even know half of it and, I'm afraid, neither do I."

Martha frowned and tore her eyes away from the young man that was dutifully cleaning Tosh's desk. "What do you mean?"

"There's something... off about him. Something I can't explain. I can't find anything about him to save my life and while that's quite normal for a Torchwood employee, there's something big that he's hiding, probably even from himself."

"He seems happy," Martha pointed out. And he did. He was still the man she knew, but he was smiling way more often than she could remember.

"I'm trying my best to make him happy, but I'm not sure I'm doing much of a job with it. I don't even know what he wants. Sometimes he acts like he needs me but when I try to, you know, dig deeper, make myself a place in his life, he freaks out and starts avoiding me like the plague. I just have no idea what to do with him." Martha wasn't looking at Jack any longer, but she could tell how helpless he was by his voice alone.

"Maybe you should just watch him," she said, remembering a dark snowy night in a world that had never happened. "And wait for him to stop running."


End file.
